You've probably seen professional photos and advertisements (especially sports ads) with a gritty, high-contrast look. Assuming you've got a well-lit photo, this effect is very easy to achieve in just a few seconds by blending a color channel. Here's how.

The video above demonstrates the process for you, but here are the basic steps:

Go into the Channels palette in Photoshop, select the green layer, and copy it.

Select the RGB composite layer in the Channels palette, then switch back to the layers palette and paste the green layer you just copied into a new layer.

Set the blending mode of your newly-pasted layer to Overlay.

Dial down the opacity until you get the look you want.

That's it!

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